


Align

by ang_the_adverse



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Gender, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Non-Binary Teddy, genderqueer luna, genderqueer teddy, non-binary luna
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-28 07:28:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7630732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ang_the_adverse/pseuds/ang_the_adverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Teddy figures out ey're non-binary in a tent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Align

**Author's Note:**

> (This uses pronouns from different 'standard' 'sets' in different parts of the grammar. I know the sets, but people also sometimes play with them so that's what I'm/Teddy is doing.)

So Teddy had guessed until today that ze was just kind of uncomfortable about gender in … Ze wasn’t sure. Another way. It didn’t totally make as much sense looking back on it, seeing everything lining up in a row pointing to just not being a guy. Because now it seemed insufficient to look back and be, yeah, never liked being called Mr., always loving learning about the ancient Wizarding Gods who swapped genders or were both or were otherwise magically and innately a mixture, and never feeling attached to the idea of gender at all. But at the time it had just felt poetic, and not an _identity_ thing. Ze guessed it could be both. Gender could be both ancient and religious and magical and also have to do with being young and queer.

 

There was both calm and anxiety about that fact.

 

Teddy knew ze never wanted to change hir name. It had been given to em by hir parents, and, while Lysander had chosen his name, for Teddy, hir name could be a not-boy’s name because it belonged to a not-boy. Whatever. Now ze had noticed that ze’d never felt like a boy, and hir body had never felt like a boy, hir fashion sense, then hir name, being attached to that person, was never really a boy’s name anyway.

 

So that was it, just non-binary, as Teddy had realised lying under a tent canopy in the Brecon Beacons, while accompanying Luna on a research/camping trip, as part of hir work placement in Studies of Magical Creatures (so re-named in the period of political activism after the war). Ze had started thinking about it around 6 months ago, when ze had been going through Lysander and Luna’s shared library of magical and muggle library of bisexual politics, queer theory, trans 101s and general political theory. Ze’d read a lot of the trans stuff, and at the time ze would have told you ze was reading up to be a better ally to Lysander. But ze guesses there was just something echoing to em in those books. And then, around a week ago, at the beginning of their trip, Luna had mentioned that “I would call myself non-binary.” In what was previously a discussion about her relationship with her son.

 

“I didn’t know that,” Teddy said, possibly pointlessly, looking at Luna’s face in the warm firelight.

 

“Oh, yes,” Luna said, “that’s why I’m not your Aunt Luna, I’m just Luna.”

 

Teddy had never actually noticed that before, that he had his Aunt Ginny, Aunt Hermione, Auntie ‘Lina (James hadn’t been able to say ‘Angelina’ and from that point the name stuck), and the rest, but the name “Aunt Luna” was never used.

 

“Does Harry know you’re, like, not a woman then?”

 

“I don’t know,” said Luna. This probably meant, in Luna-speak, that she hadn’t _told_ him but assumed he could possibly know anyway. It also therefore meant that Harry _didn’t_ know, because Harry needed to have things said to his face before he’d know them. Partly because Harry refused point blank to believe any rumours about anything, but mostly because Harry was thick about most stuff until it made itself very clear to him.

 

“But you didn’t want to be Aunt Luna and you told him that?”

 

“Yes. Just Luna.”

 

Teddy nodded. “But you still get called ‘she’.”

 

“I do.”

 

“In your books it says that non-binary people have other pronouns.”

 

Luna raised her eyebrows and smiled. “It says you _can_ have different pronouns, yes.”

 

“Oh, okay.” Teddy absorbed for a moment. “But you don’t want them?”

 

Luna shrugged. “They’re just sounds. That’s how I see them anyway.”

 

And Teddy had mulled it over in hir mind the next few nights, and somehow the idea that ze could be non-binary and have ‘he’ pronouns made em free enough to want not to have ‘he’ pronouns. Which in turn had lead to deciding ze was definitely non-binary.

 

Looking up at the drapery of the tent ze was sharing with a sleeping Luna, with little visible change or fanfare, just a slow click into place inside Teddy’s head, of objects that had been inexorably moving into alignment since ze could recall.


End file.
